John woke up still laying on the courtyard where he had fallen.
'That's new, normally I wake up hours or days later...'
It took him a second to notice who was standing over him, Chloe and Conrad.
"What happened?" John asked.
"Conrad here was able to heal you."
"I just closed up your major wounds..." The poor kid sounded really shaken up.
"Thanks, that helped a lot." John got up and took stock of the situation. John had once again been given a pill to heal his body, but the assistance of Conrad to stitch up his major wounds meant the healing energy worked better, it seemed. Luckily he was unconscious for that though, Conrad's healing was painful, itchy, and ticklish all at the same time. Looking around, parts of the compound where the battle was fiercest were ravaged completely. Shattered stones, cracked beams, torn and broken walls. Nothing compared quite to the absolute smithereens that was the remains of Lambert's pavilion though.
Three more disciples died, all from the new cohort. John grimaced, he wished that they had been smarter and stayed inside when they were helpless to the situation, or that they reacted faster to flee after the first victim. John couldn't be sure it would have helped, but at least if they had tried, there could be hope. The worst piece of it all was that John might have been able to stop Lambert if he had been focused. He spent nearly a week with his bones enhanced doing next to nothing. More qi could have made the difference, or some training to test the limits of his new strength.
Thinking back, John was worried about the final moments of that fight. Lambert had clearly pushed all the way through Foundation Establishment in one overwhelming push. Reaching the threshold of Golden Core and starting his tribulation... Lambert couldn't have done a thorough job of making his Foundation like that, but his strength still outpaced Johns by several factors by the end. The real concerning thing was how the Sect Leader acted. He had never involved himself in the affairs of the Weird cultivators directly before, preferring to let them fight and die amongst themselves. Why had his stance changed?
----------------------------------------
In a secret chamber.
The Sect Leader casually threw Lambert into a cell, locked the door and activated a formation. The bars we're reinforced by him personally to the nascent soul level, no mere Golden Core cultivator could break out, let alone someone who 'failed' their tribulation. Anyone sufficiently strong enough could interfere with a Core Forming tribulation but it was extremely taboo. Doing so interrupted the transformation of the dantian into a Core but still advanced one's cultivation to the point that Foundation Establishment qi would no longer be able to push the body to the peak. Lambert was now stuck in a bastardized hybrid state between the two stages, only by destroying his foundation could he re-attain Core Formation.
But that suited the Sect Leader just fine.
The activated formation could control the flow of qi within the cell quite easily, as well as manipulate Lambert's body. Over the next several days the Sect Leader worked diligently on him, destroying and moving meridians, twisting and modifying his dantian until his entire cultivation base was merely an incubator for even more sophisticated Gu. His body was remodeled extensively, until his flesh occupied the whole room, creeping along the walls and forming new or unusual organ shapes.
Finished with his work, the Sect Leader smiled and unlocked the door. Walking into the Lambert-room and waving a hand. Hundreds of grain pills dumped into a hopper that replaced his mouth and digestion systems, hundreds of Weird spirit stones dumped into another to fuel the creation of new parasites. Pretty quickly the incubator formed a new Gu and dumped it out onto the waiting tray. It was several times more powerful and wicked looking than the simple red worms that caused such a calamity. It was significantly bigger, all black skin, several long segmented legs and large pincers near the front, only matched by the shredding teeth of it's mouth. Most of all, it roiled with an evil and powerful aura.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The Sect Leader turned around and smiled to the waiting elders.
"Who wants to go first?"
----------------------------------------
If John felt uneasy about the deaths of several more Weird cultivators, he was devastated by the destruction in the Outer Sect. The Outer Sect was made to handle the housing and training of thousands of disciples. The best of the best would advance to the Inner Sect while everyone else would stagnate out here. That meant there was a huge range of ages, from barely sixteen all the way up to the late seventies. Such a wide range of ages was represented in the victims too.
Hundreds had died. Despite the best efforts of John and the others, they were not able to fight off the infection. Probably Lambert had made more parasites than they could possibly deal with, even as they worked on helping people. It wasn't clear exactly how Lambert had done it, but the problem had clearly escalated beneath their notice. When he advanced up a stage, the sudden difference in power between the victims and the master of the parasites triggered a wave of accelerated predation.
Lambert had literally sucked the qi out of his victims all over the sect, pulling on his connection to the Gu and draining them of their qi. When they ran out, the victims had no choice but to die. It was black luck that Lambert couldn't steal vitality directly from a distance; if he could then John would never have survived as long as he had, probably not survived at all. On the other hand, the victims were able to clearly feel their energy being drained and ran around in a panic, totally helpless to save themselves.
The panic of the victims incited a mass hysteria in the rest of the Outer sect, everyone was worried they would be next, suspicious flew around and fights broke out. Not for the first time, John clenched his fists in anger and shame. If only he had been stronger, he could have stopped this tragedy. If only he had taken more note of Lamberts instability early on, acted like a real leader, this might not have happened. John felt responsible.
A tiny corner of his conscience whispered that he could still put it all away, simply recede into the background, but John crushed it. His lack of resolution had made this situation possible, and the blame fell squarely on him for not stopping it when he could have. Instead of moping, he focused on the recovery efforts.
In a callous and macabre move, the Sect had authorized an open sect mission to recover bodies and deliver them to the freshly dug mass grave. It disgusted John that the leadership would create such a system, using contribution points to mop up the results of their own mismanagement. He refused to take the mission, but still searched for bodies.
Days had passed already, and there were an estimated two hundred bodies left to recover. Each passing hour made the discoveries more gruesome. John's abilities were well suited to scraping together remains and transporting them to the mass grave, and he treated it as penance for his negligence. Many others were like John, silently going about their work. Knocked on every door to check for living occupants, treating the work seriously.
Others still were mourning, losing one or more close friends. Very little families were formed in the Outer sect, but it still happened rarely, those were the worst sights for John. Seeing the broken look in the eyes of parents made his stomach twist so hard he fantasized about gutting himself just to be rid of it, or sinking to the floor and melting in the rain to pay for his sin. Still, he trudged on.
It was the last group that stoked his rage to unimaginable heights. There was a large portion of disciples who relished in the carnage. Excitedly finding and delivering bodies for the contribution bounty reward and making comments to the effect of: isn't it great how much less competition there is now, and how much they were looking forward to getting ahead, or isn't it a shame that more people didn't die.
John clenched his fists so hard he drew blood listening to those fools, and he very nearly struck them for their callousness, but he was able to resist. He knew that it was the sect that had created such poisonous thoughts. For whatever reason, the Sect Leader was willing to use them all as cannon fodder in his grand experiment. John thought initially it was just the Weird cultivators who were pawns in the game, but clearly he extended his reach to every cultivator in the sect.
If John had dissatisfaction and ennui before, his hate forged him a blade of focus so sharp he would not stop until the Sect Leader was dead by John's hand.
All the small slights, the tortures and indignities, even the abduction, nothing compared to the casual waste of life that surrounded him now. His garden was proving an effective method of advancing through Foundation Establishment, and by the Dao, the demons would not let him escape from a perfectly crafted Foundation. He would need to brainstorm new ways to advance through Golden Core. The effect of the garden would be a mere drop in the ocean of qi needed to advance through the Core stage. The Sect Leader was in the Nascent Soul stage, and at least middling if not peak stage, John would need to be at least on the same stage of cultivation to have a real chance at killing him.
Once he was dead, John would tear down the Rainy Cloud Sect and obliterate the heartless contagion that had taken root here.